In January, the Icelandic 2013 film, Málmhaus or Meatalhead, it’s getting a US release.
Directed by Ragnar Bragason, Metalhead, tells the story of a family dealing with the tragic loss of their oldest son in a brutal tractor accident, mostly centered on Hera, the younger daughter, portrayed by Thorbjorg Helga Thorgilsdottir. With the victim having been a big heavy metal fan, after his passing, Hera adopts the metal lifestyle for herself, dressing in black leather jacket and metal band t-shirts and spending most of her time by herself, listening to her brother’s favourite records on her walkman, becoming a metal fan herself and eventually a black metal artist, as it’s revealed that story takes place in the early nineties, around the time of the Second Wave of Black Metal’s heyday.
Even though the film intensifies a lot on metal and its imagery, it’s not the music that it is its main focus. It’s a drama, a tragic tale dealing with loss, pain, isolation, anger and dispair that ultimately meets cleansing, in one of the most cathartic bitter ends you could see in a movie.
Iceland is beautiful, in fact it’s breathtaking. The frozen landscape is proven to be ideal for the storyline to unravel and it wouldn’t have worked better any other way.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Metalhead redifines the metal fan’s affair with film. Apart from some brilliantly done documetaries, the fictional films around heavy metal, films that the average metalhead could relate to so far, would be movies like Wayne’s World, Detroit Rock City or Spinal Tap. There hasn’t been a weighty and dark as Metalhead fictional film about metal that would touch those who seek beyond the stereotypes. No offence to the aforementioned movies, which I love, a such film as Metalhead couldn’t have come from Hollywood. Only the slightest thought of Fred Durst, who has shown interest in doing a remake of this movie, actually doing it, gives me the chills.
Metalhead is just a perfect movie as it is. Black Metal fans with or without the corpse-paint on, embrace it, Metal fans, watch it now, non-Metal fans, please watch it as well if you have ever considered inspecting the genre from another point of view, a more humane-less beastly one, because metalheads are people too.
Metalhead on Facebook
ZR